So far, as an android user and some one who uses Gmail, Google, Now, Maps, Calender.....i have not used Hangouts or G+.

What benefits are there to using both of these services?

Dropbox handles my photo syncs and i just use the normal SMS app.

Hangouts/Gtalk I quite like, on the one hand for me it's cheaper (PAYG so 2p per text or 1p per Mb data, and a hangout message is way less than a mb ), but also I like that I can use the 'app' on both the phone and the PC, keeping the history 'in the cloud'. With the integration with SMS it can now be used (by me) as a single app on the phone for both which works for me.

G+, all depends on what you want, as you say Dropbox handles the photo syncs just as well, personally I use google drive rather than dropbox and G+ photo sync doesn't affect that limit, just different use cases with the same end result. As for the service itself, I see it more of a Twitter 'competitor', I've always seem Twitter as being artificially limited and ultimately a messy, nasty place to find information. G+ is a far nicer layout and yet it does the same "follow people/companies/groups to keep up to date with what's happening" idea.

This is getting daft, there is still no date for a press event etc, it's like they are just going to spring it on everyone. At least we all now know that there will be stock of the phone in shops when the announcement is made, so no further waiting. Is there a way the guy with the handset at work can easily verify the hardware spec's I wonder.

"Something really clever someone else said and I copied from an email of clever stuff people have said"